North Carolina Medicaid is partnering with the North Carolina Health Information Exchange Authority (NC HIEA) to utilize NC HealthConnex, the state-designated health information exchange, as a central data aggregator. Currently, over 10,000 healthcare facilities are connected and contributing records to NC HealthConnex, with an additional 6,000 facilities in the onboarding process. As NC Medicaid advances value-based care, accurately and promptly monitoring beneficiary health outcomes is paramount.

NC HealthConnex recently achieved validated data stream designation through the NCQA Data Aggregator Validation program, ensuring that data in NC HealthConnex align with data in participating health systems’ EHRs. This milestone significantly reduces the administrative burden on providers for data sharing while enhancing the integrity of data collected on beneficiary health outcomes.

Additionally, NC Medicaid is launching provider workgroups focused on primary source measure validation for key metrics related to hypertension, diabetes, and depression screening. The goal of these workshops will be the development of a gap assessment identifying strengths, opportunities for improvement, and recommendations used to design practice coaching and incentives to improve the quality and completeness of data submitted to NC HealthConnex. 

Learn How To:

• Use best practices and lessons learned that can guide payers and health systems towards increased interoperability, specifically for quality measurement.
• Leverage health information exchanges like NC HealthConnex to aggregate and analyze health care data.